Monthly Study Units?

So, I was reading an article last night about the merits of doing units of study on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. I was reminded of how much fun it was to study artists, composers, countries, etc. in class in elementary school and started thinking about ways to incorporate that into my own classroom.

I think that doing an artist of the month, a composer of the month, and a country of the month would be a good way to expose the kids to art/music/geography without taking away too much of the time that will need to be devoted to math/language arts. I also considered the possibility of a "scientist" of the month, but I think that might be a little much for my first year.

Ideally, I'd like to do art projects in the style of the "artist of the month" -- maybe 10 different artists, and an art project each Friday (depending on grade level). For the composer of the month, we could study a bit about each one's life, music style, etc. and then I could play the composer's music in the morning/afternoon during group work, etc. so they would become familiar with it.

For country of the month, I think it would be great to study 10 different countries -- history, location, food, culture, language, etc. ts pretty easy to come up with 10 great composers and 10 great artists -- but I'm concerned about coming up with 10 great countries (also worried about the risk of being Ameri-Eurocentric and/or not representing my students heritage).

Here's my initial list (tried to pick countries that I know I'll be able to find a rich amount of history/cultural items to discuss/show in my class/etc.)... India, China, Japan, Mexico, France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Brazil, Ghana, Egypt, England, Russia, Panama, Chile, Vietnam, Thailand, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, Phillipines, Australia, Canada

Its so hard to narrow that list down! But when I finally do, maybe Snackmaniac can recommend some good international snacks?